He handed Lady Camellia a glass of ratafia, and led her to one side, where the crush of people was less. If he was to be sensible, he would leave her, would find someone else to talk to. But he could not bring himself to do so. She leant back against the wall, and sipped the drink as he placed himself, instinctively, in a manner which shielded her from the accidental bumps of passers-by, and from the eyes of most in the room.
He watched as the liquid glossed her lips, and her tongue slipped out to catch an errant drop. A sudden mad impulse took him, to lean in, to pin her against that wall, and to kiss away the moisture from those perfectly shaped lips. He met her soft brown eyes, and felt the world spinning, as if he might fall into those brown pools, might lose all sense of who he was – what little of that he had left.
With a shuddering breath, he wrenched his gaze away, staring instead at the potted palm beside her, until everything steadied again. How did she do this to him? No other woman had ever had this effect on him – and he had known many, both here and on the continent. Yet all he had to do was be near Lady Camellia, to detect the unique scent that she wore - something light, and seemingly compounded of a field of spring flowers, underlaid by something muskier - and he was shaken, and drawn into behaving in a manner completely unlike himself.
Then she confounded him further, as she spoke, her words bringing his eyes back to hers in startlement.
“You asked what I hide. Should I tell you? For if I hide something, and I tell you, it will no longer be hidden. Can I trust you? Indeed, why should you expect that I would trust you? For surely, it seems to me from everything that I have seen and heard, you hide far more than I do, and you have not chosen to trust me with any of that. Perhaps I hide nothing – perhaps you also hide nothing – but perhaps we both keep secrets for good reasons. I will leave it to you to decide which you believe to be true.”
He was left without words, and simply offered his arm to lead her back into the salon, as the recommencement of the entertainment was announced.
<<<
Lady Prunella Danby sipped at her tea – well, that is, her hot water with a faint flavouring of what once might have been a tea leaf – and looked at the newspaper before her. The Daily Tattler was, at best, a gossip sheet, and at worst, the spreader of outright lies, for a price. But it served her purpose.
She scanned the columns of small print, where all manner of dubious things were advertised, until she finally found what she had been hoping to see for some days. She set the tea cup down, her hand shaking, and looked at the words again. The words which promised that she would be saved, that she might, if she was careful, even be able to afford decent tea again.
She would not be precipitous – she must think carefully about the next step, for if she was to succeed, she needed to ensure that none of what happened next was ever traceable to her, even though it might be repeated, often. But at least now there was hope.
Once again, being willing to do whatever it took to survive, no matter how drastic, no matter how tainted it left her feeling, was proving the wisest course.
Chapter Ten
“It is done, Marie. I have placed the advertisement. Now we must wait for the next message, with instructions.”
“Oh Georgette, I am so very afraid. What if the blackmailer demands more than we can possibly pay? What if they do as was threatened, and ruin our reputations in some worse way? Although, truly, I cannot imagine what they might do…”
“I can, Marie. They need only claim that we have given away our virtue in some clandestine fashion to do that. All they have done so far is imply that we might do such things – if they changed that to claiming that we already have…”
Marie looked at her sister with wide shocked eyes, as she thought through the implications. She paled.
“Are you sure that paying them will prevent it? Can we be certain that the gossip will stop?”
“We have to trust that the blackmailer has some shred of honour in them, and that, if we pay, they will indeed stop. I can see no other hope.”
“But Georgette, how can we trust in that?”
“In truth, I do not know… but do you have any better idea?”
<<<
The afternoon light was fading towards twilight as Damien went up the steps to Mr Swithin’s office. He felt oddly disconnected, his mind full of uncertainties. He had, after his visit to Bentick and Black, sent a letter to Mr Swithin, asking that he arrange a meeting in his offices.
It was time to confront his half-brother, and ask some hard questions. Exactly what those questions would be, he was not sure – but he needed to remove any lingering doubts about Mr Thomas Black’s validity as his father’s son, and about the man’s motives for coming forward now, so long after the Will reading which had revealed this whole sordid affair.
The same ink-stained clerk opened the door as at his previous visit, and bowed politely.
“Welcome, Your Grace, do please follow me.”
He was led, not to the small room he had met Mr Swithin in before, but along a corridor, and into a somewhat larger room, with a substantial table and chairs, as well as couches set to one side. The clerk left him there, and returned shortly with a tea tray. Mr Swithin followed him in, accompanied by Mr Thomas Black.
It was, again, rather startling to see that face, in the flesh, rather than in the portrait on the Blackwater Chase gallery wall.
He blinked, and forced his eyes to Mr Swithin, who had begun to speak.
“Good day, Your Grace, I trust that you are well? Might I make known to you Mr Thomas Black, whom we have spoken of before. He is, to my absolute belief, your half-brother. Mr Black, this is Damien Falton, the Duke of Blackwater. Gentlemen, I will stay in the room, but I will urge you to speak freely – I will not interrupt, or speak unless you ask something of me, for it is my expectation that you have much to discuss between you.”
Damien looked at the man before him, and smiled – a smile he suspected looked more predatory than pleasant. Mr Black returned it, a little hesitantly but, in his eyes, there was a spark of something which might almost have been amusement. Damien could not but respect that.
“Your Grace.” The words were accompanied by a bow of significant elegance. “I believe that we have met, rather recently, although… unofficially?”
The directness surprised a laugh from Damien.
“We have. And I must apologise for the subterfuge – but – I wanted to make my own assessment, before we met more formally. Let us be seated, and partake of this no doubt excellent tea, before it cools too much. And then, I have some questions for you – and I suspect that you will have some for me.”
They settled onto the couches, and Mr Swithin quietly poured the tea, as the two men studied each other in silence. What was he thinking, Damien wondered, this half-brother of his?
He accepted a cup, and sipped, before setting it down on the nearby side table. He did not, he realised, quite know where to start. The man before him, who he had no real doubt was his father’s son, might hold clues to understanding what had happened, and why his father had betrayed them all as he had. For the first time, it also occurred to him that he had no knowledge of who this man’s mother had been – he assumed that the woman was dead and gone – but even that, he did not know for certain.
Mr Black set his own tea cup down, and met Damien’s eyes.
“What would you like to know about me, Your Grace?”
“Why now? Why did you wait so long to come forward, after the gossip about the Will reading went around?”
It was not, perhaps, the most polite way to begin, but it was the question which most urgently preyed on his mind. Mr Black appeared to consider a moment, then spoke, his voice calm and steady, and showing no sign of being discomposed by Damien’s manner.
“Yes, I did hear the gossip when it first went around, after the Will reading, as you have surmised. I chose not to step forward then, as, at that point, I was well set up to survive without needing
any handout from the man who had taken so little interest in my life. And, to be blunt, I did not like the thought of becoming part of that gossip myself, of being a curiosity to be pointed at by the ton, of being the illegitimate child that a Duke thought so little of that he had kept him hidden for twenty years. But now, my circumstances are less ideal, and any addition to my resources would help – and the gossip had died back – at least I thought that it had.”
Not wishing to be the subject of gossip was an understandable thing. A pity that he, himself, had never had the option to avoid it, Damien thought wryly.
“It hasn’t. Some nasty soul, who lives to whisper about others, has started it all again, just because I have re-entered society after my mourning. But now that you’ve come forward – its too late to return to hiding, so you’ll have to suffer it, just as I do. But tell me – what do you expect to receive?”
Damien watched the man’s face closely – was he hoping for more than that bequest, whatever it was? Was all of this a prelude to him wanting to be paid to stay out of sight? Wanting Damien to support him? Or was he as genuine as he seemed, on the surface?
“In truth, I don’t know. If I was not in rather difficult straights in the business, as a result of a few… gentlemen… of the ton not paying their bills, I would not have come forward at all. It’s seven years since my mother died, seven years since my life has been touched by anything at all from your family – and even then, it was only the small allowance that your father sent every month, to support my mother. I’d as lief have let it all remain in the past, yet I would not lose my business, and old Bentick’s legacy, for the sake of my pride. So I asked Mr Swithin to approach you. If the bequest turns out to be of little value, so be it – I will find some other way to survive. But it was, I thought, at least worth finding out.”
Well. That was a fair enough answer, one which Damien could not fault the man for. Indeed, it was an answer which showed a degree of integrity and personal strength which he had not expected.
There was a quiet pride in Mr Thomas Black, a determination to be his own man, despite his beginnings, which Damien found himself admiring. How had this man come to be as he was? Who was his mother? Where had his father met the woman? There was so much he didn’t know, about this life which had run parallel to his own, invisible to him.
“That is fair. I am curious, I find, about your life, your beginnings. I did not know of your existence, until that Will reading, and now… tell me what you knew of my father, your father, if I am to believe all of this. Tell me, if you can, about your mother, and how she came to bear you.”
It was, perhaps, overly intrusive of him to ask such things, yet, before he fully accepted the man before him as his half-brother, he needed to know. Deep inside, part of him wanted to understand, to find a reason to forgive his father for his actions. Those green eyes, so like his own, flickered with emotion for a moment, then Mr Black gave a small nod.
“I will tell you what I can, although I saw our father only once that I can remember, when I was, perhaps, one year old. He looked at me, and his face creased with what seemed like pain, then he turned away. I did not understand. Many years later, my mother told me that she suspected it was because I looked so much like you, and like he also had looked, as a child. But what I remembered as a child was the sense of being rejected, of being found wanting in his eyes. After that day, he never came to see us again. He had rented a small, barely respectable house for us to live in, and he sent money each month – not a lot, but enough for us to survive in genteel poverty. That stopped when my mother died. If Bentick had not taken me on as apprentice, I would have been on the streets.”
Damien’s buried bitter anger rose to the surface again. Rather than give him reason to forgive his father, this conversation, so far, had simply given him greater cause to rage at the betrayals. No child or man should be left to life with no home, in such a manner. The callousness of his father’s actions sickened him.
“Who was your mother? How did she meet our father?”
Even as he said the words, he knew it to be true – he had accepted, deep within, that this man was, indeed, his brother.
“She was well born, the daughter of an Earl. He was not, apparently, very wealthy, his father having been profligate with his funds, but he was reasonably well respected – or so she told me. She refused to speak of her family, beyond telling me that, for they had turned their backs on her once they found out that she was increasing. She would not even speak their names. All she said was ‘I am no longer Lady Augusta, I am simply Mrs Black – everything else is the past’. As to how they met – that, I did learn a little of. It seems that my mother’s family were some sort of very distant cousins to your mother’s family, and that my mother had come to live with your family, as a sort of companion to your mother, when you were a small child. That close proximity led to an unwise attraction.”
Damien felt as if all air had been knocked from his lungs, and he struggled to breathe. A faint memory came to him, of a tall slim woman with deep brown hair, standing, talking to his Nanny. He must have been under two at the time, and he only remembered now, because that day, he’d had a monumental tantrum and the events had stuck in his mind. That woman must have been Thomas’ mother, for now that he remembered her, other memories drifted to the surface.
All coloured by one simple fact – as a child, he had liked her.
And his father had dishonoured her, then hidden her away to live a life of genteel poverty, ignored in London.
He had, when he had given it any thought at all since the revelation at the Will reading, thought that the woman in question must have been an actress, a demi-mondaine of some sort… but this – his revulsion at his father’s actions was even deeper, now that this had been revealed.
He swallowed. He needed to be quite certain of Mr Black’s motives, no matter what kinship he found that he felt for the man before him. For surely, such a childhood could have left Thomas bitter, and wishing to seek revenge upon the family who had done so badly by him, and his mother?
“I see. And… did your mother not resent the situation which my father had left her in? Especially as he did not see her, after that time, for so many years?”
Thomas shook his head.
“She did not. As far as I could determine, she took all blame on herself, for having been weak enough to allow herself to be seduced, to go willingly into his arms. She barely spoke of him, beyond telling me who he was, and that I should not hope to seek him out, but should make my own way in life. She was not, by nature, a bitter woman – she looked for small pleasures and positive things, rather than allow herself to sink into misery.”
Damien considered those words – that description of the woman aligned with his vague childhood memories, in which she was always smiling.
“And what of you – what have your feelings been on the matter?”
This was the answer which mattered most, the one which would, in many ways, determine what Damien did next.
“I will admit to curiosity – what boy would not wish to know something of his father? – but I felt no need to seek him out. In truth, I did not desire the life of an acknowledged illegitimate son – from what I could ascertain, such may receive wealth and comfort, but they are never accepted, truly, as part of the ton, yet they are not anything else, either. I was happy enough with my mother, and, when she died, I was left with some funds, from the last money sent by my father, and a week to vacate the house. I asked the maid I knew, from a house down the road, if she knew of anyone I could get help from, about what to do next. She said that Mr Swithin, here, was known as a good man, for helping with charity work and the like, so I risked everything I had on trusting him. I had to trust someone. That was the best decision of my life. Once Mr Bentick took me on as apprentice, on Mr Swithin’s recommendation, I never looked back. I was making myself a future, and that future had no need to include my father. If I wanted to know of him, I need only read the newspapers, to
keep up on the doings of the ton. My only regret was that, due to his choice to ignore me, I never had the chance to know you. I had always thought that to have a brother would be a wonderful thing.”
An odd tightness caught at Damien’s throat. How many times had he, as a boy, wished for a brother, no matter how much he cared for his sisters? He could not, he realised, deny this man his inheritance – whatever pittance his father might have chosen to grant him would be far too little, and far too late, yet anything was better than a life completely ignored. No matter his previous doubts, he knew now that Mr Thomas Black was genuine – and his brother.
“And now that you do know me, at least a little? I suspect that I am not what you might have imagined. Thank you for answering my questions. I will not hold you back from receiving whatever my father has bequeathed to you. I do not know what it is – the bequest is still sealed – but I hope that he was more generous in death than he was in life, to you, at least. I will make the necessary arrangements.”
“Now that I know you, at least a little, no, you are not what I, as a boy, imagined. You are better than that, for you have proven yourself a cautious man of integrity. And I thank you for not treating me with scorn, simply because I was born out of wedlock. I had feared that you might simply cast me aside, as your father did.”
“Of all that I have learned from the last year and more, since his death, the clearest thing is that I do not wish to emulate my father, in anything beyond his dedication to Crown and Country, and his good care of our estates.”
“Thank you, Your Grace.”
“Did you know, Mr Black, that you look just like he did, as a young man? There is a portrait at Blackwater Chase which you must see one day. It might as easily have been painted of you.”
A Diamond for a Duke : Book 4: Camellia: Clean Regency Romance (A Duke's Daughters - The Elbury Bouquet) Page 8
